In modern mobile networks such as public land mobile networks, information generated by mobile subscribers is transported over a radio access network to a core network and finally onwards to the end destination where it is processed. In many sensor and M2M (machine-to-machine) based applications it is desirable to reduce the amount of data that has to be transmitted over what can be a lengthy transmission path, thereby to provide a faster feedback loop, where feedback is employed.
In current public land mobile networks, third party application servers (that is, those not provided by the operator of the network) are always implemented as sitting outside of the operator's network and the information transmitted from the mobile subscribers to the application servers must be relayed through both the radio access and core networks.
As such, redundant information may be transmitted through the network, which impacts the overall network capacity. This is particularly important for sensor/M2M based applications in which a number of sensors/machines in an area are observing the same phenomenon and are reporting back to the server via mobile devices thus generating redundant load on the network.